Aggressiveness, boldness, and lateralization: an investigation of personality by sex and alternative male morph in Pelvicachromis pulcher

• Author / Creator

  Seaver, Cheryl Marie Sedlak

• Animal personality, patterns of behavior that are consistent across time and contexts, is a growing area of study and has been documented in a wide array of species. Some personality traits show sex differences. Recent work on the kribensis cichlid (Pelvicachromis pulcher) suggests that some variation within sex may be related to their environmental sex determination system. Little is known about personality in this species, however, in this thesis I examine the personalities of females and two alternative male morphs with respect to aggression, boldness, and lateralization. I investigate how the gender and morphs are related to personality and how the characteristics of personality intersect and interact with one another. To evaluate these characteristics I ran fish through five tests: an aggression assay, an open field exploration task, an novel environment emergence boldness task, and several cerebral lateralization tests. I demonstrate that 1) the different sexes and morphs employ different aggressive strategies; 2) there are boldness differences between the sexes, but not the morph types; and 3) there are also lateralization differences in eye use between the sexes and morphs, which are, to a certain extent, dependent upon the stimuli. These results suggest that females are very different from either male morph type particularly with regard to aggression and boldness.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Aggression
  • Pelvicachromis pulcher
  • Kribensis
  • Boldness
  • Lateralization
  • Morph
  • Personality

• Graduation date

  Spring 2015

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3CQ28

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.